Jury Finds Election Official GUILTY of Mail-in Ballot Fraud
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Last week, a jury over in the state of Wisconsin found an election official to be guilty of ballot fraud.
Specifically, this was an election official over in Milwaukee named Kimberly Zapata, who, back in November of 2022, fraudulently requested several absentee mail-in ballots and sent those ballots to the address of someone who was not even expecting them.
However, not everything is as it seems in this case, and the details are rather strange, to say the least.
And so let's go through them together.
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Now, in November of 2022, right ahead of the midterm elections, something odd happened.
A Wisconsin state representative named Janelle Branschen, she opened her mailbox at home and she found three authentic mail-in ballots that were sent there.
Quote, Representative Branschen received three authentic military ballots to her home addressed to Holly, a woman who has never lived there.
Branschen believed this was part of a scheme to steal votes in Wisconsin.
And as such, this state representative issued a public alert, which included a photo of the three ballots that she received.
You can see them up on your screen.
An official investigation was then launched by the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department, and after several days of investigating, they discovered that these ballots were not sent by mistake.
Instead, it was Ms.
Kimberly Zapata who had requested them by using fake aliases.
Here's specifically how it's laid out in the criminal complaint, And just for your general reference, during this period of time, in November of 2022, Ms.
Zapata was serving as the Deputy Director of the Election Commission over in the city of Milwaukee.
"On the morning of October 25th, Ms. Kimberly Zapata made up three names with fake social security numbers and requested military absentee ballots in those names through MyVoteWisconsin, the state's voter database." Meaning that one morning, approximately two weeks before the actual election day, Zapata went into the state's public-facing website, typed in three fake names, three fake social security numbers, and that was it.
That was all that it took to have real, actual military absentee ballots to be sent to the address that she typed in.
Which might sound shocking to you until you realize that quote, under Wisconsin law, someone requesting a military absentee ballot does not need to register to vote or provide any photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot.
Any request automatically results in a ballot being issued.
Meaning that this was not a glitch.
And this was not something that was only made possible by the fact that Ms.
Zapata was a high-ranking election official in the state.
Instead, this is just how the system in Wisconsin works.
Anyone.
They can log in, enter some information, real or fake, and that's it.
Their mail-in ballots will arrive within several business days.
It's a truly amazing system.
Now, at this point, you might be asking yourself and wondering, why in the world would you do this?
And even more specifically, why would Ms.
Kimberly Zapata, who was an election official, mail these absentee ballots to the home of a Republican state representative?
Especially a representative who, at one time, was trying to decertify the 2020 election results.
And this is where the story takes a bit of an odd twist, because according to the criminal complaint, here is what apparently happened.
Quote, The Milwaukee Election Commission's Executive Director sent Ms.
Zapata an article on Monday about someone applying for military ballots and sending them to State Representative Janelle Branschen.
She sent Zapata a statement from Branschen, in which Branschen remarked about how easy it was to receive military ballots, to which Zapata responded, she has a point.
Ms.
Zapata then told the Election Commission Executive Director on Tuesday that she created the fake voters and had the ballots sent to the lawmaker to show how easy it is to commit fraud in this manner.
Zapata did this because she wanted to make a point that there is fraud in existence.
She stated she wanted the truth to come out so that they could focus on actual problems.
And so what happened, allegedly, was that the Executive Director of the Election Department showed an article to the Deputy Director, Ms.
Zapata, about someone making these fake requests for mail-in ballots and being successful at it.
Ms.
Zapata looked at the article, and then the subsequent day, she said to her boss that she was the one who did it.
She herself requested these three mail-in ballots using a fake name, and sent those ballots to Representative Branchin, who I should mention, at this time, was the co-chair of the state assembly's election commission.
And so she's the woman who could actually effect some change.
Ms.
Zapata informed her boss that she was the one who did this.
And so, this is exactly why this particular case is so odd.
Because even though technically, Ms.
Zapata did commit ballot fraud, she was doing it to viscerally prove that ballot fraud was possible.
As the deputy director of the election department, she was sending these ballots to the co-chair of the state legislature's election commission.
And so, there's really two ways to look at it.
On the one hand, by the letter of the law, She did commit a crime.
But on the other hand, she was attempting to expose a problem.
Sort of like when you have a manager at a company call up that company's customer service line in order to expose potentially bad service.
And so, in this scenario, what do you do?
Well, I don't know what you would do, but the city of Milwaukee, well, they threw the book at Ms.
Zapata.
To start with, as soon as the criminal complaint was made public, the mayor of Milwaukee, Mr. Cavalier Johnson, he came out.
He gave a public press conference saying this in part, quote, I will not tolerate and certainly will not defend any misrepresentation by a city official involved in elections.
It does not matter to me that this might have been an effort to expose a vulnerability that state law created.
This is a blatant violation of trust, and Ms.
Zapata was fired immediately.
Furthermore, aside from being fired by the city, prosecutors have been pursuing their case against Ms.
Zapata for the past year and a half now, charging her with one felony count of misconduct in public office alongside three misdemeanor counts of election fraud, one for each mail-in ballot.
Now, during the actual trial, the defense lawyer tried to argue that Ms.
Zapata was essentially a whistleblower, and she did not mean to hurt anyone.
But on the flip side, you had the assistant district attorney say that Ms.
Zapata went rogue and broke the law.
"She is not a whistleblower.
She is not exposing information.
She is committing election fraud.
As a society, we cannot tolerate people who break the law when there are multiple legitimate means to raise those same concerns." And indeed, as I mentioned at the top of today's episode, just last week, a jury agreed with the prosecution and they found Ms.
Zapata guilty on all four counts.
She now faces a maximum of five years behind bars, although her actual sentencing is scheduled for May 2nd, which is a little over a month from now.
But actually, regardless of how many years or months she gets behind bars, as a convicted felon in the state of Wisconsin, Ms.
Zapata will now be, among other things, prohibited from ever being able to carry a gun, as well as prohibited from ever serving in an elected office.
But here's the best part in all of this.
Despite the resources, the time, the energy, and all the money that the local government has spent pursuing this case, the actual problem that Ms.
Zapata was trying to highlight was never addressed.
They successfully pursued charges against her for the past year and a half, but to this very day, anyone can still head on over to the public-facing MyVote Wisconsin website, and they can order as many absentee military ballots as they wish.
Which might actually help to explain why the whole whistleblower argument did not work.
Because the problem isn't that the officials in Wisconsin aren't aware of the loophole, it just seems that they are perfectly okay with it.
If you'd like to go deeper into the details of this particular case, I'll throw the links to my research notes.
You can find them down in the description box below this video.
And also, I'd love to know your thoughts.
Do you think that Ms.
Zapata was a genuine whistleblower in the state of Wisconsin who was just trying to get this loophole fixed?
Do you think that the judgment against her was fair?
Or do you believe that the state was correct to pursue the charges against her to the very end because she did, after all, break the letter of the law?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below.
I'll be reading through them this weekend as well as early next week.
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Let's do it!
Until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epic Times.